PS4 6.20 WebKit Exploit Released by @SpecterDev (Patched for System Firmware 6.50)

The PS4 might get some attention again. After the last few weeks, where we saw multiple Homebrew Releases - such as a updated Linux Distribution for your PS4, various Homebrew Games for your PS4, Emulators for playing older Classics on your PS4 and other useful Homebrew Applications, which makes your PS4 more useful for you - today, Developer @SpecterDev released a new WebKit Exploit for a newer System Firmware, namely for System Firmware 6.20. Although this Exploit isn't a complete Kernel Exploit together with the fact that this Remote Code Execution Exploit has been already patched by Sony on the newest System Firmware 6.50 released a few days ago, it is still a useful method to tinker more with this specific System Firmware, as Developer @SpecterDev describes it with his own words, which you can see down below. This can be especially useful for Developers, who wants to tinker with older System Firmwares as well, such as for System Firmware 5.55 for instance. Maybe we can see a newer full Kernel Exploit for a newer System Firmware released sooner or later.​

It can be useful to update to System Firmware 6.20 sooner or later.​

PS4 6.20 WebKit Code Execution PoC

This repo contains a proof-of-concept (PoC) RCE exploit targeting the PlayStation 4 on firmware 6.20 leveraging CVE-2018-4441. The exploit first establishes an arbitrary read/write primitive as well as an arbitrary object address leak in wkexploit.js. It will then setup a framework to run ROP chains in index.html and by default will provide two hyperlinks to run test ROP chains - one for running the sys_getpid() syscall, and the other for running the sys_getuid() syscall to get the PID and user ID of the process respectively.

Each file contains a comment at the top giving a brief explanation of what the file contains and how the exploit works. Credit for the bug discovery is to lokihardt from Google Project Zero (p0). The bug report can be found here.

syscalls.js - Contains an (incomplete) list of system calls to use for post-exploit stuff.

wkexploit.js - Contains the heart of the WebKit exploit.

Notes

This vulnerability was patched in 6.50 firmware!

This only gives you code execution in userland. This is not a jailbreak nor a kernel exploit, it is only the first half.

This exploit targets firmware 6.20. It should work on lower firmwares however the gadgets will need to be ported, and the p.launchchain() method for code execution may need to be swapped out.

In my tests the exploit as-is is pretty stable, but it can become less stable if you add a lot of objects and such into the exploit. This is part of the reason why syscalls.js contains only a small number of system calls.

Usage

Setup a web-server hosting these files on localhost using xampp or any other program of your choosing. Additionally, you could host it on a server. You can access it on the PS4 by either;

Fake DNS spoofing to redirect the manual page to the exploit page, or

Using the web browser to navigate to the exploit page (not always possible).

Vulnerability Credit

I wrote the exploit however I did not find the vulnerability, as mentioned above the bug (CVE-2018-4441) was found by lokihardt from Google Project Zero (p0) and was disclosed via the Chromium public bug tracker.